A black SUV pulled to a stop in front of Tobias Hankel's house. Hotch and Garcia stepped out of the vehicle and into the morning light. Neither of them were in a particularly good mood as they approach the old house.
"You know they do have hotels in Georgia," Garcia said not even attempting to conceal her unhappiness of the fact that she is being required to stay at the house before her.
"If we are going to find out where Tobias Hankel is, the answer is in this house. There is no sense in splitting time in between here and a field office," Hotch said in his usual business voice.
"Right," Garcia said unhappily.
"Think of the house as a witness. If it could talk what would it tell us," Hotch asked before turning and walking into the house.
Garcia walked up the steps of the front porch and looked around disapprovingly.
"My guess is that it would tell us to get the hell out," she said before reluctantly following Hotch inside.
The inside of the house looked no better than the outside. Junk was piled everywhere, and the state of the house only served to make Garcia feel more uncomfortable. She followed Hotch into the kitchen to see the rest of the team around the table.
"Welcome to our nightmare," JJ said greeting Garcia.
Before Garcia could react to JJ's words, Gideon spoke up.
"The computer is an extension of his brain. I'm going to need you to dissect it."
Garcia nodded her consent.
""I'll get you set up," Morgan said. "Come on"
Morgan lead Garcia to the computer room, leaving the others in the kitchen.
"So nothing new since I left?" Hotch asked the remaining four.
Prentiss was the first to reply. "Well, the good thing is that the guy practically documented every second of his life. Bad news is that we are still unpiling."
"From the looks of it, he hasn't left this place in years," JJ added in casing Prentiss to have an idea.
"He knew he could pretend to be looking for a motel and throw us off his trail," she said referring to the false lead that they had the night before. A sheriff from two town over called in saying that he gave directions to a man that fit Hankel's description to a motel. When they arrived a the motel to check out the lead, there was no such man there.
"No, no, no," Gideon said grimly, shaking his head. " It's more than that. Sheriff's office, 911 calls. Every time he engages the police and gets away with it, it reassures himself that God is on his side, not ours."
"Okay. Right out of the gate. This guy is self-taught. His main frame is totally idiosyncratic, but it's pretty brilliant," Garcia said to Morgan. She sat in front of Hankel's computer system that had at least a dozen monitors arranged for viewing. Morgan paced behind her.
"Talk to me about what this son of a bitch watches online. What the hell is all of this," Morgan said referring to the multiple computer monitors Hankel had set up all over.
"It's teen stuff:. video game software, sports. Seriously if I had to guess whose system this belongs to, I would say a crazy smart high school kid."
"Garcia, that doesn't make any sense," Morgan said, confusion written all over his face.
"Well, that's what I got."
"A mission based killer like Hankel would need constant reassurance, religious manifesto, violent images, something," he said shaking his head. He could shake the feeling that something was off.
"Nothing," Garcia replied as she tried away at the keyboard in search of anything that would raise a red flag.
"What about the mpegs of the murder he posted online? Does he sit and watch those over and over?"
"Okay, that's weird," Garcia said while tying faster.
"What? Talk to me," he said looking back and forth between Garcia and the computer monitors.
"They're not even here. All I have is the site he set up once he commandeered people's webcams. And he keeps a running clock, and a certain point each one is bookmarked with a different heading."
"Adulterer. Liar. Thief," Morgan read off. "This guy just sits here for day and watches these people and waits for them to commit a sin."
"So when one of them commits a sin, he takes them and kills them?" she asked looking up at Morgan.
"It looks like it."
"But what about the guy he took last night? He approached Hankel instead of Hankel approaching him, there is a chance that he was never on Hankel's watch list. He wouldn't have a way of knowing his sins," Garcia said hopefully. She didn't want to see any more videos of this man killing innocent people because of his twisted beliefs.
"But if you dig deep enough on any of us, we all have our sins."
Sam sat alone in the room still tied to a chair. His mind was now clear, and he was looking for a way out. He knew he couldn't act now because Hankel was to come back soon. That guy was all kinds of crazy. Split personality, Sam mused. He was a wild card and highly unpredictable, so he decided to wait, make a plan of escape, and execute it at the optimal time.
Sam was caught slightly by surprise when the door to his left was kicked open. He turned to see Hankel walk in carrying an armful of firewood. Sam quickly looked away not wanting to agitate the volatile man. It worked for a while, the man paid little attention to him.
Sam sat alert in the chair that he was tied to. He subtly tracked Hankel's movements as the man sat down the firewood and tossed in a log without uttering a single word.
"You're a sinner," Hankel said out of the blue.
Sam couldn't help but snort. If only he knew. But Sam didn't dare say that. "You have no proof of that," he said instead, trying to figure out the man's game.
"We're all sinners."
Hankel quickly grabbed one of Sam's foot and sat down before taking off Sam's shoe. The second shoe soon followed the first one.
Sam, while utterly confused, didn't not fight back. He knew that he could probably take him down even with being tied to a chair, but Sam didn't want to take his chances. In the end, Sam decided to just sit and take whatever the man dealt him. He could almost guarantee that he had been through a lot worse than whatever this man was planning to do to him.
"This will be over quickly if you just confess your sins."
Sam stayed silent and stared the man in the eyes. Sam wasn't completely sure why this man was wanting to know his sins, but he was sure that giving the man the information he wanted was the wrong thing to do.
The man picked up a piece of wood and whacked it against the bottom of Sam's unprotected foot. Pain shot through Sam's foot, but it wasn't anything that he couldn't handle. He says silent, not screaming out, not giving the any sort of satisfaction.
"Confess," Hankel demanded again, but Sam stay silent. He raised his head to show his determination to stay silent and didn't so much as even flinch as he was struck again.
Dean was practically fuming in his Impala as he flew down the road. The FBI was crawling all over Hankel's house, preventing him from being able to go back to search for any clues. He was now headed to the police station that the FBI agents were previously occupying. Dean knew that it was risky, but he needed to find Sam.
Dressed in his suit, Dean parked his Baby and strolled into the station with confidence in his walk.
"Can I help you?" a female at the front desk asked.
Dean flashed her his fake badge as he walked up.
"Actually, you can. I need to take a quick look at the all the flies and notes that you have on the current serial killer case," he said with a polite smile.
"Doesn't the rest of your team already have a copy of all of those files? Also, I haven't seen you here before," she said skeptically.
"I'm not actually on their team. They called in for more agents, and I was sent," Dean said smoothly. "I wanted to have a brief summary of the case, so that I have something to brainstorm about on my long drive out to where they currently are staying. Do you think that you can help me out here?"
There was a beat of silence where Dean was seriously contemplating on just getting the hell out of there, but was quickly relieved when she nodded her head.
She took him over to an unoccupied computer and pulled up the files that he was asking for. He thanked her as she left to return to the front desk.
Not wasting any time, Dean began scrolling through the information. Luckily, with years of experience, Dean could skim through police files relatively quickly. After reading through all of the flies, Dean was no closer to figuring out where that creep took Sam, but he did have a better understanding of the crazed man and had a few ideas on where to go from there.
Please feel free to leave a review. Also, I am still looking for a beta reader if anyone if interested.
Thanks for reading.
SuperSherlockedGallifreyan
